Zombies v. Vampires

Earlier this year, Time Magazine declared "Zombies the New Vampires" based on the ascendancy of flicks like Dead Snow, the upcoming Zombieland and books like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." And that's not even considering the realm of video games, where zombies have been dominating for years with the "Resident Evil" and "Left for Dead" series.

But Vampires wont die quietly (as anyone who has seen the finale of The Lost Boys knows). New vampy movies and tv series are being trotted out on a continual basis to rapturous adoration. There's of course the Twilight series with its dreamy sparkle vamps, True Blood on the tv with its human blood abstaining vamps, and a new bloodsucking flick, Thirst, from Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook.

The entertainment industry is responding to our demand for hungry undead monsters. But is the vampire camp growing soft?

I haven't yet gotten to see Thirst, which, considering Chan-Wook's other works, will probably be edgy and disturbing, but the majority of recent vampire flicks tend to lean pretty hard on the tender romancing while sacrificing the ghoulish, undead, will-eat-your-kittens-for-breakfast aspect of vampires that made them popular in the first place (Nosferatu, anyone? That dude was Not sexxy).

There have been a few exceptions, notably, 30 Days of Night, but it's beginning to seem that vampire culture is losing its dark soul.

Many of these "modern" vampires bend over backwards to avoid feeding on people. You know who would never think to do that? A zombie.

Zombies are reliable for ruthless, merciless destruction. You can't seduce a zombie. You can't convince it to eat a Big Mac instead of your face. You would never want a zombie to "change" you into one of them. Their monsterness is undeniable and repellent. It makes them fun to watch. It makes them even more fun to kill.

The vampire set is now overdue for a bloody swing back towards its more vicious roots; the genre's cool factor has been heavily depleted by its fuzzy figureheads. But until that swing happens, zombies will always be there, steadfast in their hunger; the monster that will never let you down.

Our Director Gets Her Brain Picked by the Zed Word Blog!

Our lovely director Katie Carman was interviewed by "The Zed Word, Zombie Blog" this week!

Katie spills the details on all things Eaters. You might even learn something! Check it out here:

http://zedwordblog.blogspot.com/

Thanks to the Zed Word Blog for the great interview!

Hello, Brooklyn.

Despite a number of political and economic challenges, New York City remains at the heart of American cinema.

Among all U.S. workers employed in the motion picture and sound recording industry, one in ten calls New York home, which is just second to L.A. County.

In 2008, there were more than 27,000 shooting days in New York City, up from 15,000 in 1993, according to the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting.

Manhattan, of course, serves as the nucleus of the city's film industry.

But what about Brooklyn?

A simple search on IMDB found that there have been at least 1,554 movies and television episodes filmed--at least partially--in Brooklyn.

There's the obvious: Saturday Night Fever, the Cosby Show and Do the Right Thing.

Meanwhile, there's the not-so-obvious:

· Buffalo Bill's Wild West Parade (4 episodes in 1900);
· Debbie Does Dallas (1978);
· Ben Hur (the 1907 silent film);
· Peter Pan (a television version produced in 1960); and
· Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie's 2009 production, starring Robert Downey Jr.)

And our Eaters is one of the more recent additions to the Brooklyn canon, with scenes filmed in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bed-Stuy.

But in the end, we're still New Yorkers. So, join us at Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan on August 4 for a screening of "Eat Me!" at the NewFilmmakers Summer Series.

Don't mess with my Beastie, jerk!

When creating a genre movie, particularly a monster flick, it's up to the filmmakers to put their own unique stamp on the beasties or risk going unnoticed, unrecognized or even worse- unwatched. Sometimes the attempts at re-telling the tale of the same, time-worn monsters in a different way leaves us with a weirdly mixed bag of sparkle vampires, teen werewolves, and boobarellas gone wild. Creativity is one thing, but when you mess with "the Facts"- watch out.

Nowhere is the disagreement over the "true nature" of a monster more divided than with our undead, hungry hero, the zombie.

Perhaps because they are "us" or perhaps because their inherent simplicity makes them so much fun, new interpretations of the zombie can cause die-hard fans to take up (severed) arms against unrealistic or unreasonable portrayals of this most stalwart of monsters.

We are currently living in the age of the super-fast (28 Days series), super-smart - (in zombie terms mind you)( Day of the Dead) and super-subservient (Fido) manifestations of the classic zombie. While some viewers may scoff at the fleet-footedness of the ghoulies in "28 Days" (or outright deny that they are in fact, zombies) or wrestle with the implications of zombies that can learn, or (WTF?) develop emotions, they are all part of one big-flesh eating family.

Our Eaters set a new model. Created by a radioactive blast that keeps the corpses alive and fantastically ravenous, our zeds are neither smart nor particularly fast. Some of them are markedly more aggressive then others. Some attack. Some don't. Or at least, some Eaters are slower than others when it comes to figuring out how badly they want to eat you.

But beware, children, letting a drop of your blood fall free around an Eater. That will get you noticed, in a very, very bad way.

"Bloodlust?" I hear you say, dear reader, "That's vampire shit!"

Well, not anymore. It's EATER shit, friends. The zombie world has changed again.

The director's chair: you can't sit there, woman

Much has been written about how women have been portrayed in horror films, and a good chunk of it suggests strong female characters have usually played second fiddle to the horny male adolescent fantasy.

There are many exceptions, of course. Perhaps most famously, there’s Alien (1979). And more recently, Mitchell Lichtenstein's Teeth (2007) made some noise for shaking up the genre.

But when it comes to celebrated directors...well, we can't do much but scratch our heads.

We went back and looked at the award winners from nine horror film festivals--both famous and not so famous--and couldn't find one woman whose work had been given the top prize for a feature film.

(for the record, the festivals we looked at were: Saturn Awards, New York City Horror Film Festival, Toronto After Dark Film Festival, Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, Dark Carnival, Sacramento Horror Film Festival, Fright Night Film Festival, Screamfest LA, and Shriekfest).

Sixty six prizes awarded over the years and not one woman. That's a really bad batting average.

We did manage to find one woman with an award-winning film: Yfke Van Berckealer. And that was for a 37-minute short film (Zombie Love) at 2007's Zompire: The Undead Film Festival, which is held annually in Portland, Oregon.

To be fair, Hollywood hasn’t fared much better. Just three women have been nominated for a best director's Oscar award--but no winners.

Are we overlooking an award winner? Let us know.

A day without sunlight, but with some hot news!

Cold Hands daytripped it out to Bellmore for the long day of events that composed the closing Gala of the Long Island International Film Expo. We met some interesting people and were happy to see THE EATERS nominated in the Best Long Island Feature Category. The overall event could have used some serious tightening (we the audience sat in a dark theater for four hours on the most beautiful of summer afternoons- I kept thinking, if this were at a restaurant at the Nautical Mile, we could all be looking at boats, and seagulls, and longshoremen!) Anyhoo. We were happy to be recognized in a city that as treated us well.

In other super-exciting news, the treatment for our next feature has gotten us into the quarterfinals of the Ultimate Filmmaking Competition. There are still many hoops to jump through, but we are psyched to be in the running for the awesome cash prize.

THE EATERS have also gotten a shout out from women-in-horror site Pretty Scary. Thanks ladies! Check out the link here -
http://pretty-scary.net/content/katie-carman-and-elizabeth-lees-zombedy-eaters-trailer

More photos from our June 26th Premiere!

We just got our hands on some additional photos taken at our premiere June 26th. Many thanks to George McClosky of Perfect Photo!

Here's a shot of the crowd in the lobby area of Anthology. We had a packed house!

Another shot of the lobby:

Here's a great shot of the cast & crew (Liz, we lost you there behind Ed X!)

Making our little speech before the screening:

Here's a cool view from the audience (with a little help from Photoshop on the screen. Thanks George!):

May the "Eat Me!" banner always fly high.

This past Wednesday, Cold Hands got a little undead and took to the streets with the new, glorious Eater Banner. We descended upon the huge, outdoor screening of Evil Dead II at the McCarren Park Ballfields in Brooklyn stocked with our army of postcards and our corpse like grins.

Our deadness and our amazing banner at first received only curious looks from passersby, but soon, once it was realized that we would not actually bite, we were approached by many friendly zombie lovers.

Some of them had interesting things to say.

One chap, seeing Katie staggering in a zed-like fashion, an EATERS postcard in her outstretched hand, remarked "You're a zombie! Gimme THAT!" and snatched it away. Thank you, sir.

Another said "You shoulda had a bike messenger zombie in your movie." Sir, we Do have a bike messenger zombie in our movie. Report to the Anthology on August 4th!

Others wanted to quiz us on other zombie movies. One individual ate the postcard, proving... we're not sure. Another man offered to sell us a zombie survival guide. We pointed out our macabre appearances and shrugged ---A little too late for that, pal. But thanks anyway.

Most however, simply expressed enthusiasm for the walking dead, and amusement that the film was shot locally. The Eater Banner will no doubt be making many more appearances this summer, but we consider its inaugural flight to be a great success.

"EAT ME!" escapes to Long Island (International Film Expo, that is)

This past Tuesday, Eat Me! was screened for a crowd of hungry zombie fans at the Bellmore Movies, in Bellmore, Long Island. We amassed a seriously respectable crowd for a late Tuesday evening. There was a brief Question and Answer session with the filmmakers after the screening, in which the two inevitable questions were voiced:

What was the budget for "Eat Me!"?

Of course, an epic feature like "Eat Me!" that spans two boroughs and an extra COUNTY has a hefty price tag--- and that's not even counting the "Love" that was involved (love is so difficult to commodify that the world bank has given up trying to assign it a dollar amount). Because of these, and other accounting difficulties, the producers had to demure and shy away from revealing any actual figure. We can say however, that we did produce the film on a shoestring, and that that shoestring is now covered in fake blood.

Will there be an "Eat Me!II" ?

This is one of our favorite questions. Not only because we like to imagine that people ask it because they love the movie and want to see more of the characters (and eventually watch the surviving characters get eviscerated by eaters) but also because the potential sequel names are so very tempting. Here's a sampling ---
Still Eatin'
Hungry For More
Second Helpings
The Main Course
Save Your Fork, There's Pie!
Undigested
Are you gonna finish that?
If anybody can think of any more good ones, we'd love to hear em.

Please accept our apologies for the sporadic posting. It's been a busy week with our first festival premiere! We promise to update you very soon with all the latest news.

Stay Tuned!

Greetings!!

Lots of fun news to share. Our premiere last Friday went really well, and the film had a great reception. We hope the trend continues into next week when we have our 1st Festival Screening!
Don't forget: Tuesday, July 14th at 9:30pm at the Bellmore Theaters, THE EATERS will be screening with a few other shorts films as part of the Long Island International Film Expo. $1 of every ticket purchased will go to the North Shore Animal League, which is awesome.

Because we're taking part in this amazing festival, we've gotten mentioned in a few newspapers. The first and most exciting being The New York Times. We also were mentioned today as a film of interest in Newsday.

We hope you're all doing well and enjoying your summer!